Proposals have been made to equip a vehicle with a distance measuring sensor, such as an ultrasonic sensor, and detect an object present near the vehicle, such as a vehicle running ahead, a pedestrian, and an obstacle. Also, proposals have been made to perform various controls to enhance driving safety of a vehicle, for example, to actuate a braking device and give a warning to a driver, by using an object detection result.
When a control to enhance safety of a vehicle is performed, a threshold of a distance to an object near the vehicle needs to be changed according to a height of the object before execution of the control. For example, when a case where a vehicle is parked along a wall is compared with a case where the vehicle is parked along a curb, the vehicle can be parked closer to the curb than to the wall.
An object detection device of above-described type is described in Patent Literature 1. When an object is present on roadside with respect to a curb, the object detection device described in Patent Literature 1 detects presence of a low object, such as the curb, based on a reception time difference between reflected waves respectively reflected from the curb and the object.